Self select info fields

86ul
Hello,

Thanks for this amazing software.

It seem that some Oxford Press books and it sections/chapters are starting to have a DOI url too, like The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199729715.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199729715

Is it therefore an idea to add an option to self select some extra fields per item type?
  • bwiernik
    You can add DOI and other fields to the Extra field at the bottom of each item like this:
    DOI: 10.12345/67890

    That will get picked up in citations.

    See https://zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields#citing_fields_from_extra for more details
  • 86ul
    Thanks, but that was not my question.

    I already know that we can use extra for such info, but I was just wondering if it can be made possible to self select those fields.

    To organize field "Extra" a bit better, so to say.
  • bwiernik
    No, that’s not possible. When proper Zotero fields are added to items for DOI, etc in future updates, variables will Extra will be migrated automatically.

    You should regard Extra as being a collection of fields and other content, each one on its own line
  • 86ul
    Is it therefore an idea to add an option to self select some extra fields per item type?
  • adamsmith
    Allowing genuine custom fields has been requested before but it's fairly involved logistically (how do they sync? How do they behave in groups? How do they behave in citaiton styles?) and will definitely not happen in the short term.

    Specifically for DOI, that will get added to all item types soon-ish, most likely with the next major release (i.e. 5.1/6.0)
  • 86ul
    Thanks for answering my request.

    Maybe you have thought about it, but is it an idea to sync all possible fields, but opt to see just those the user have preselected? This results in a huge database with a lot of empty fields, but it is a start...
  • DWL-SDCA
    @86ul Please recall that all of the data included or missing from Zotero fields does not increase your storage space when you sync. The synced omission of empty fields likely would always play havoc with database structure. Many records arrive from publishers with empty fields that should be amended when the metadata becomes available.
  • adamsmith
    (They're not complaining about empty fields but requesting to allow all possible fields for all item types, which isn't implausible, but does have issues with both usability and citations, which is, I assume why Zotero didn't do this from the start. Mendeley e.g. does, albeit with fewer overall fields)
  • mimosinnet
    @bwiernik, thanks very much for the tip! I was looking for a way to include the impact factor in the references, and I have managed to achive this by Including the impact factor in the Extra field. I have used the Citation Style Language variable "note", that seems to match the Zotero "Extra" field. Cheers!
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